Field
The present invention generally relates to medical devices and more particularly relates to medical implants, surgical procedures of delivering the medical implants in a patient's body, and methods and systems for designing and fabricating these medical implants.
Description of the Related Art
Biomechanical properties of bodily tissues such as elasticity, viscoelasticity, resistance to creep, etc may be different at different locations or may vary along different directions due to anisotropic nature of the bodily tissues. For example, vaginal wall properties differ along different portions and in different directions. Even biomechanical properties of the same wall such as anterior vaginal wall or posterior vaginal wall may be different at different locations of the same wall. Further, biomechanical properties of anterior wall and posterior wall are different from one another. Still, same tissues of different patients such as same portions of the same vaginal wall may behave differently biomechanically.
There is a need for a patient-specific customized implant that exhibits biomechanical properties and behaves biomechanically in accordance with the biomechanical properties of the bodily tissues. There is still a need for a device and system that is capable of designing and fabricating such a patient-specific customized implant used for reconstruction of tissues, hernia repair, prolapse repair, incontinence repair or for any other purpose in accordance with the varying properties of the bodily tissues.